Amid mounting pressures to increase efficiency and decrease costs, hospitals and health systems are looking to incorporate the assembly line model popularized by car manufacturers and engineers into patient care, according to US News and World Report.
Executives at Seattle-based Virginia Mason Health System have examined Japanese auto manufacturers, like Toyota, to turn employees into quality inspectors to ensure patients receive the best care possible.
"In Japan … everyone working in that line had the ability to stop the production line if they saw a quality or safety concern," said Charleen Tachibana, CNO and senior vice president for quality and safety at Virginia Mason. "One of the things that we have really been working on is to get all of our workforce engaged as quality inspectors to deploy standard work where we need to deploy it."
Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins School of Medicine aims help its employees feel comfortable speaking out on situations they believe are inappropriate. The health facility also installed a pilot model in its intensive care unit to implement a product line approach to help reduce costs, improve productivity and safety and minimize high rates of error and stress for providers, patients and their families.
Johns Hopkins officials designed digital portals for providers and patients. One allows physicians and medical practioners to more easily monitor patients. The other was created to make patients feel more comfortable expressing their goals and feelings about the care they received to medical personnel, according to the article.
A hospital's decision to implement a systems approach hinges on its ability to maintain quality patient care and pay for implementation expenses.
"How [do the processes] eventually scale? It has to be compelling financially and medically," said Adam Sapirstein, associate professor of anesthesiology and critical care at Johns Hopkins. "It's going to improve your bottom line, improve patient engagement, improve the workforce morale, and cost less."